Week Links

Image via

Stumbled upon a Facebook ad for these sweet smelling candles for those homesick for their home state. Chocolate and molasses for PA...pretty accurate, I think.

This article totally speaks to the kind of person I am. I've never been nervous about spending time by myself. Sometimes I can actually get frustrated if that alone time is interrupted!

The year's top B&Bs list has been released and No. 1 is this adorable English location in Dorset.

Check out this cozy pajama set from J. Crew! I can just picture myself lounging around all day in these.

With Valentine's Day just around the corner, some of us still don't know what to do. Why not whip up a romantic meal at home? Saveur has a list of some delicious dishes to consider.

<3 Ashley

Have a great weekend!

Recipe Box: My Grilled Cheese

There are certain foods that people can get very defensive and opinionated about. One such food item I am sharing today—grilled cheese. It is the classic sidekick of soups of all varieties and itself can come in a few different forms. I read an article a few years ago asserting that buttered white bread and two slices of American cheese was the true formula resulting in the perfect cheesy sammy (excuse me while I channel my inner Rachael Ray!)

I have my own opinions on the matter. Since I have been such an active grilled cheese consumer from youth to adulthood midnight snacking, I feel I have room to speak. I am not a white bread eater and when it comes to American cheese, I have to admit that I am a hater. Sorry...you can't tell me that it is the yummiest cheese in the case.

Recently, I was lazily constructing a soup and grilled cheese lunch and through slight alterations discovered my new favorite way to eat this timeless sandwich:

- Na'an (wheat preferred)
- 2 slices of pepper jack cheese
- butter melted in the skillet

Still simple, yet different enough to be a little exciting. Note: It may be sad that right now this feels like the most daredevil move of my life. I broke some na'an into pieces sized to my desired portion and to accommodate the cheese slices. Melt butter down in the skillet; I feel weird spreading it directly on the na'an. Then proceed as normal. Enjoy!

<3 Ashley

How do you take your grilled cheese?

Making College the Best for You

I'm clearly not on the same page as everyone else!

I'm still fresh off the heels of graduating college and am still in the transition period between graduate and adult—or so I feel I am. While I am certainly very much just kicking off a wonderful, lengthy life with many years to go, college will go down as some of the best four. I will never regret the decision I made to attend a four year college despite the fact that I will be paying for it for the foreseeable future.

While the education was quite pricey, the experiences that I had outside of the classroom were priceless and made the time so much better. I was blessed with amazing people and got to fall in love with the amazing city that is Pittsburgh. Side note: peek this HarpersBazaar article listing PGH as one of the top 10 places to visit in 2017!

If I were to give some kind of advice to those just entering college (like the old wise person I am!) it would be, simply put, to go to class and also go places outside of class. In more specific terms:

Take advantage of what your school offers. Pitt was wonderful place to explore. Our student IDs could be used on public transportation throughout the Pittsburgh area. Anytime we needed or wanted to get to a different neighborhood or spend a day downtown, there was nothing keeping us from doing so. Our IDs also granted us access at most of the museums around the city. Let me tell you, it didn't suck to spend a rainy day wandering around the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History, which was right across the street from our campus.

Benefit from the free stuff on campus. I loved the plethora of free stuff that was available around campus throughout the year. On campus concerts, wellness classes and events, and alumni events were frequently on the calendar to ensure that we were never totally bored. I was also a huge fan of Pitt Arts, which provided the opportunity for students to attend film screenings and performances by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Ballet, and the Opera with discussion and food included. I may or may not have appreciated the fabulous desserts and rich conversation at the Orchestra (and the beautiful architecture at Heinz Hall!)

Stay on top of your mental and physical health. Another benefit that I was very much grateful for was the 24-hour fitness centers around campus. Each residence hall included a private gym just for those students living in that particular hall. There were all two other fitness centers in the basketball arena and in the student union if you had time to set aside to sweat between classes! Mental health is also important. "Walk away" was a frequent text from my mom late at night when I was clearly burning out from information/work overload. Warning: those moments can be frequent in college; learn to identify the stress early and learn how to best handle it. I would close my laptop and devote at least one night during the weekend totally to my friends and good times. Maybe hit up karaoke night?

Make some money. Of course you can't commit yourself to working too many hours when you're already devoting so many to your studies; however, you can definitely fit in 10-12 hours a week to make some money for groceries! I got a job my junior year when I went off the campus meal plan since we had a kitchen in our apartment-style dorm. I was able to support my appetite (an accomplishment) and start squirreling away some cash for senior year when we would be moving totally off-campus. Additional financial tip: shop for things only as you need them. You may find yourself in the store more than once a week, but if you know what you need and you stick to that list it should be no problem.

Plan ahead. Understanding how you are going to pay for your education before you get into it is important. You need to know before you get started where you are getting your money from. I familiarized myself with the repayment packages before graduated so that I could prioritize my spending. I went strictly federal on my loans—I feel like pursuing other private loans might have stressed me out a bit more. There are also many services out there, like Earnest, that give you the opportunity to refinance and rework your loans to fit a model that you are more comfortable paying off and possibly paying off faster. And that's the goal isn't it? To pay it all off as fast as possible.

<3 Ashley

What are your college survival tips? Or if you're going to be attending, what are your concerns?

Holiday Sweets

image via

The holidays are over, but there are still some aspects that linger. Example: the bags of cookies, containers of fudge, and my brother's birthday cake. I imagine that my blood sugar is so far past the roof at this point. Tell me I'm not the only one with this struggle. We all want to start the year off right and get those veggies and treadmill miles logged, but how can we do that we the temptations of the season still hanging around?

My solution? Shove it off on others. I've been harping on my family to help themselves and even offered to bring along bags of sweets to meet-ups with friends (they said no because "2017 is the year I take control") THIS IS NO TIME FOR DISCIPLINE!

I truly do not feel I can commit myself to my new year health kick until the sweets have left my fridge. Plus, half of the cookies and all of the fudge were made by me—and there is no way I am throwing out all of my hard work. I will hit the pavement running again and will certainly work on making healthy meals (with the new cookbooks I got for Christmas!) but I will still be snacking and working on getting those holiday sweets outta here!

<3 Ashley

Are you still being haunted by the ghost of Christmas sweets?

On A New Year

image via

Hello, and welcome to 2017! 

I for one am incredibly excited to see the turnover in years and celebrated accordingly; my friends and I traveled to NYC to attend a very fun and fabulous Great Gatsby party. You better believe that I went full flapper in my outfit.

The final 10-second countdown to midnight at the party was so full of excitement and relief. I think that we can all agree that overall 2016 has been the not-so-good, very bad year. This year has been marked with international conflict, personal issues (myself included), and far too many Hollywood deaths for a girl to handle. Seriously, who will entertain me now?

While I certainly will not look back at this past year fondly, I will remember everything it taught me. It taught me to be strong in the face of incredibly difficult moments; it taught me how to lean on my friends when I need to; and it taught me how friends come and many times they go. This has certainly been a year that has forced me to grow up in a lot of ways.

I do not know what 2017 will hold for me—hopefully a full time job? But I do have just a few small things that I would like to get out of this year:

• I want to read a lot more. Much of my attention in 2016, especially the second half, was on the computer screen. I received a number of fantastic reads for Christmas that I would love to devote my free time to this year.
• Organize my thoughts and my life better. 2016 was a very forgetful year for me. I frequently found myself in a panic trying to get things done that really should have been done maybe a week earlier. I will see you daily, agenda.
• Multi-task less. Let's face it. We all claim to be great multi-taskers, but at what point can we admit that the products of this multi-tasking are not as great as if we had focused all of our attention on them. I aim to focus my time better so that I am able to do my absolute best.
• Take a breath and think before I speak. Maybe it was just the climate of this last election, but 2016 saw me spouting off at the mouth frequently without much thought or consideration.

Let's see if I can actually stick to this plan and make at least two of these hopes reality.

<3 Ashley

What are some of things you want to accomplish in 2017?